“It is my considered opinion,” he declared, even as he wrestled with me, “that the situation has evolved beyond the point where it can be handled by the private citizen.”
I gave up. It was undignified trying to get my arm loose from Dobby’s clutching paws and I likewise began to see that a club was no proper weapon to use against the bugs.
“You may be right,” I said.
I saw that Billy was peering through the door.
“Get out of here,” I yelled at him. “You’re in the line of fire. They’ll be throwing that chair out of here in another minute. They’re almost through with it.”
Billy ducked back out of sight.
I walked out to the kitchen and hunted through a cupboard drawer until I found the phone book. I looked up the number and dialed the police.
“This is Sergeant Andrews talking,” said a voice.
“Now listen closely, Sergeant,” I said. “I have some bugs out here…”
“Ain’t we all?” the sergeant asked in a happy tone of voice.
“Sergeant,” I told him, trying to sound as reasonable as I could, “I know that this sounds funny. But these are a different kind of bug. They’re breaking up my furniture and throwing it outdoors.”
“I tell you what,” the sergeant said, still happy. “You better go on back to bed and try to sleep it off. If you don’t, I’ll have to run you in.”
“Sergeant,” I told him, “I am completely sober…”
A hollow click came from the other end and the phone went dead.
I dialed the number back.
“Sergeant Andrews,” said the voice.
“You just hung up on me,” I yelled. “What do you mean by that? I’m a sober, law-abiding, taxpaying citizen and I’m entitled to protection, and even if you don’t think so, to some courtesy as well. And when I tell you I have bugs…”
“All right,” said the sergeant wearily. “Since you are asking for it. What’s your name and address?”
I gave them to him.
“And Mr. Marsden,” said the sergeant.
“What is it now?”
“You better have those bugs. If you know what’s good for you, there better be some bugs.”
I slammed down the phone and turned around.
Dobby came tearing out of the living room.
“Look out! Here it comes!” he yelled.
My favorite chair, what was left of it, came swishing through the air. It hit the door and stuck. It jiggled violently and broke loose to drop on the pile outside.
“Amazing,” Dobby panted. “Truly amazing. But it explains a lot.”
“Tell me,” I snapped at him, “what explains a lot?” I was getting tired of Dobby’s ramblings.
“Telekinesis,” said Dobby.
“Tele-what?”
“Well, maybe only teleportation,” Dobby admitted sheepishly. “That’s the ability to move things by the power of mind alone.”
“And you think this teleportation business bears out your hive-mind theory?”
Dobby looked at me with some astonishment. “That’s exactly what I meant,” he said.
“What I can’t figure out,” I told him, “is why they’re doing this.”
“Of course you can’t,” said Dobby. “No one expects you to. No one can presume to understand an alien motive. On the surface of it, it would appear they are collecting metal, and that well may be exactly what they’re doing. But the mere fact of their metal grabbing does not go nearly far enough. To truly understand their motive…”
A siren came screaming down the street.
“There they are,” I said, racing for the door.
The police car pulled up to the curb and two officers vaulted out.
“You Marsden?” asked the first one.
I told him that I was.
“That’s funny,” said the second one. “Sarge said he was stinko.”
“Say,” said the first one, staring at the pile of wreckage outside the kitchen door, “what is going on here?”
Two chair legs came whistling out the door and thudded to the ground.
“Who is in there throwing out the stuff?” the second cop demanded.
“Just the bugs,” I told them. “Just the bugs and Dobby. I guess Dobby’s still in there.”
“Let’s go in and grab this Dobby character,” said the first one, “before he wrecks the joint.”
I stayed behind. There was no use of going in. All they’d do would be ask a lot of silly questions and there were enough of them I could ask myself without listening to the ones thought up by someone else.
A small crowd was beginning to gather. Billy had rounded up some of his pals and neighbor women were rushing from house to house, cackling like excited chickens. Several cars had stopped and their occupants sat gawping.
I walked out to the street and sat down on the curbing.
And now, I thought, it all had become just a little clearer. If Dobby was right about this teleportation business, and the evidence said he was, then the boulder could have been the ship the bugs had used to make their way to Earth. If they could use their power to tear up furniture and throw it out of the house, they could use that selfsame power to move anything through space. It needn’t have been the boulder; it could have been anything at all.
Billy, in his uninhibited, boyish thinking, probably had struck close to the truth–they had used the boulder because it was their food.
The policemen came pounding back out of the house and stopped beside me.
“Say, mister,” said one of them, “do you have the least idea what is going on?”
I shook my head. “You better talk to Dobby. He’s the one with answers.”
“He says these things are from Mars.”
“Not Mars,” said the second officer. “It was you who said it might be Mars. He said from the stars.”
“He’s a funny-talking old coot,” complained the first policeman. “A lot of stuff he says is more than a man can swallow.”
“Jake,” said the other one, “we better start doing something about this crowd. We can’t let them get too close.”
“I’ll radio for help,” said Jake.
He went to the police car and climbed into it.
“You stick around,” the other said to me, ‘Tm not going anywhere,” I said.
The crowd was good-sized by now. More cars had stopped and some of the people in them had gotten out, but most of them just sat and stared. There were an awful lot of kids by this time and the women were still coming, perhaps from blocks away. Word spreads fast in an area like ours.
Dobby came ambling down the yard. He sat down beside me and started pawing at his whiskers.
“It makes no sense,” he said, “but, then, of course, it wouldn’t.”
“What I can’t figure out,” I told him, “is why they cleaned the house. Why did it have to be spic and span before they started piling up the metal? There must be a reason for it.”
A car screeched down the street and slammed up to the curb just short of where we sat. Helen came bustling out of it.
“I can’t turn my back a minute,” she declared, “but something up and happens.”
“It’s your bugs,” I said. “Your nice house-cleaning bugs. They’re ripping up the place.”
“Why don’t you stop them, then?”
“Because I don’t know how.”
“They’re aliens,” Dobby told her calmly. “They came from somewhere out in space.”
“Dobby Wells, you keep out of this! You’ve caused me all the trouble I can stand. The idea of getting Billy interested in insects! He’s had the place cluttered up all summer.”
A man came rushing up. He squatted down beside me and started pawing at my arm. I turned around and saw that it was Barr, the rockhound.
“Marsden,” he said, excitedly, “I have changed my mind. I’ll give you five thousand for that boulder. I’ll write you out a check right now.”
“What boulder?” Helen asked. “You mean our boulder out in the back?”
“That’s the one,” said Barr. “I’ve got to have that boulder.”
“Sell it to him,” Helen said.
“I will not,” I told her.
“Randall Marsden,” she screamed, “you can’t turn down five thousand! Think of what five thousand…”
“I can turn it down,” I told her, firmly. “It’s worth a whole lot more than that. It’s not just an agate boulder any longer. It’s the first spaceship that ever came to Earth. I can get anything I ask.”
Helen gasped.
“Dobby,” she asked weakly, “is he telling me the truth?”
“I think,” said Dobby, “that for once he is.” The wail of sirens sounded down the street. One of the policemen came back from the car.
“You folks will have to get across the street,” he said.
“As soon as the others get here, we’ll cordon off the place.”
We got up to start across the street.
“Lady,” said the officer, “you’ll have to move your car.” “If you two want to stay together,” Dobby offered, “I’ll drive it down the street.”